The Boys‘ series finale is fast approaching, and there are concerns that it’s going to have a disappointing ending like Game of Thrones did. Ending any popular, long-running TV show is difficult to pull off, especially in more fantastical genres where theories abound, as evidenced by the divisive response to things like Lost, Thrones, and more recently, Stranger Things. The Boys Season 5 is keenly aware of its ending challenges, with a Supe known as the Worm twice making self-referential comments about how hard finales are to get right, showing just how cognizant showrunner Eric Kripke is of things going wrong and sparking a backlash.
Still, while it might end up dividing fans, The Boys plans to go out with a bang, and not just on streaming. It has been confirmed that the series finale will release in theaters on May 19th, the day before it drops on Prime Video. That not only mirrors a move by Netflix with Stranger Things, but also means that The Boys‘ finale will now release on… the exact same date that Thrones ended back in 2019. That’s a slightly ominous sign and certainly opens itself up to those comparisons even more, and the show itself even had a character say “Winter is coming” in Season 5, Episode 6, but all hope is not lost.
No matter what The Boys does, it isn’t going to please everybody. That’s increasingly difficul for shows of its size, and it’s already clear that Season 5 is at least somewhat splitting opinion based on the reactions online each week, though the same was true of Season 4 as well (with a sense that the show peaked with Season 3’s “Herogasm.”). Interestingly, though, while the concern is its ending being disappointing like Game of Thrones‘ was to so many, the issues so far are actually quite the opposite.
The biggest problem with Season 8 of Thrones is how rushed everything was, as its truncated run meant it blew through storylines that would’ve once spanned a full 10 episodes, and the internal logic suffered as a result. With The Boys, while there are several factors, the big complaint is it having “filler” episodes and wasting precious time in a way that, according to its detractors, isn’t setting up its endgame and advancing the plot enough.
Some of that is fair and correct – there is, for instance, too much time spent on what feels more like setup for the Jensen Ackles-led Vought Rising prequel than it does the show’s own ending. But some of that character work has been important: take Episode 5, for instance, which was the most divisive of the bunch so far (and one of only seven episodes of the entire series to have a rating lower than 8/10 on IMDb), which progressed the characters of Homelander, Soldier Boy, Sister Sage, Butcher, and several more in crucial, compelling ways.
The final episodes are predominantly character-driven rather than plot-driven, whereas Thrones was the other way around. And The Boys‘ approach should actually stand it in good stead: story is nothing without strong character work underpinning it, because that’s the reason to care in the first place. That gives the show a reasonable shot at getting its character payoffs and the emotional conclusions to the series right and, if it can do that and stay true to the core of the series, the plot will hopefully work enough to support them, and we can get a satisfying climax.
New episodes of The Boys release on Wednesdays on Prime Video.
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